... however, the more you know, the more in awe you become at your own ignorance! "...those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." --Bertrand Russel

Friday, December 9, 2011

Note: If you already love TSO or hate TSO, this review will
not help you. However, if you are like
me, and are vaguely familiar with them and considering going to a show, read
on.

I had very high hopes for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra show,
since I was familiar with a few songs, but not really a fan. Indeed, my wife and I used one of their songs
in our wedding. Before the show I
Googled information about it, only wanting to know the length so I could plan
for daycare and my bladder. In addition
to learning that the show was around 2 ½ hours with no break, I recall reading
a couple of comments by other reviewers:

1) Though it is partly a Christmas show, it does not leave
you feeling “Christmasey”

2) The Christmas part of the show has some sort of narration
in between the songs, which simply DOES
NOT WORK

I couldn’t agree more with these sentiments. Additionally, the show was tiresome and overall
not very enjoyable. While the musical
and voice talents were adequate, and a lot of effort was obviously put into the
show, it simply didn’t work. I have
thought long and hard about why this show left such a bad taste in my
mouth. My best answer is that every
single thing seemed to be overly contrived—melodramatic is the word -- just not
honest. The performers were working
hard—working WAY too hard, and most of the audience wasn’t quite able to buy
into it. Don’t get me wrong, there were
a few enjoyable spots, but these would quickly be overshadowed by something
inane. Let me provide some specific
examples.

The narrated story seemed overly dramatic, and the narrator
went overboard to use a low, breathy, shaky voice and exaggerated hand gestures
(think of a combination of Charlton Heston’s Moses and a bad TV preacher). Similarly, some of the singers used fakey, gravely
voices that didn’t work. In one “song”,
a guy dressed as a beggar pseudo sings an overly long story-more a spoken word
piece than a song. I couldn’t really
follow what he was rambling on about, but it felt like a sermon of some type
accompanied by a simple, repetitious guitar riff. I could feel a sense of relief from the
audience when it was finally over.

The general performance style of all of the band members
involved a similar melodramatic, attention-whoring style that was unnatural and
needy. One female singer tore at her hair as if recalling a recent genocide of
her people. She moved unnaturally-- the
musicians and singers in general tried to move in an exaggerated fashion as if
they were really into it. Or, they stuck
to contrived moves like well-timed head banging, throwing their TSO-required
long hair back and forth, or the electric violinist swinging his arm around in
circles over and over again, mimicking a juvenile electric guitar move. Look- I love it when musicians really get
into what they are doing, move and sway in weird ways, and even make funny faces, but it has to be real.
Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder do it, and you know that they didn’t learn
it from watching others—they are genuinely feeling it. With the TSO performance, I was led to
believe that this was all an over-choreographed act.

This show was what a precocious 12 year old, who is confused
about his musical identity, would design as his perfect show—throwing in a lot
of everything imaginable. Or perhaps, it
is what aliens who don’t understand humans would construct after carefully
reading about musical performances. Just
as a casserole does not benefit from adding a tablespoon of every spice known
to man, a show can actually benefit from subtlety. The TSO has laser lights, strobes, fog
machines, copious amounts of propane burning, fake snow, giant monster heads, a floating
three-axis stage above the crowd, silly uniforms, pretentious quotes from Reagan,
JFK, and Churchill, long blonde hair, and an overly-loud sound system. And, they actually do have some good music (I
am listening to it as I type this).
However, the show doesn’t work.
It is over thought and under felt.
If they took everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, and toned it down about
50%, I think the show could be much, much better.

I hate to be repetitive, so I will reiterate. ☺ The critical flaw for me was that the performers
made every effort to let us know that the show was about THEM, not about
US. They were jumping up and down on the
stage yelling “LOOK AT ME!!!!!” and pointing at themselves. Yes, literally POINTING at themselves. When you can’t get applause because your show
deserves it, you jump up and down pointing and telling people to yell. Also,
FOUR TIMES the band forced the audience to stand up. By forced, I mean that they asked the people in
the front row to stand, which causes a chain reaction. How impressive is it to beg for a standing
ovation… how about earning it? By the
fourth time, about 20% of the audience had had enough and just sat there
shaking their heads.

This quote from the TSO website sums up the kind of hubris
that created this monster. Actually,
created TWO monsters—since there are actually two versions of TSO touring
simultaneously (apparently the group I saw was the “original” one- I wonder if
the other group pulls it off better?).

When
Paul O'Neill first conceived Trans-Siberian Orchestra, his goal was as
straightforward as it was ambitious. "The whole idea," he explains,
"was to create a progressive rock band that would push the boundaries
further than any group before, following in the footsteps of Emerson, Lake
& Palmer, Pink Floyd, the Who...but take it way, way further."

Wow. Would a “real”
band put the following on their website?

With
more than 7 million albums sold TSO has inspired generations of fans to
rediscover the multi-dimensional art form of the rock opera. On the road,
meanwhile, they have become one of the world's top acts including a recent
mention in Billboard magazine as one of the top touring artists of the past
decade. With a $20 million-plus production that has played to over 7 million
people in 80+ cities, selling more than $280 million worth of tickets.

More “look at me!”, indeed.
Stop telling us how you are great, and just BE great! Now, when I started analyzing what was wrong
with the TSO show, I couldn’t help but compare it to the Blue Man Group. After all, the BMG has multiple groups as
well, and their show is certainly contrived and overdone. And, how can I possibly complain about the
overuse of stage props like propane when the BMG uses tons of toilet-paper-like
streamers? The first time I saw the BMG
in New York, I left laughing and crying, simply amazed. I didn’t want it to end. One of the Blue Men put a little blue paint
on my face and I wore it on the subway back to the flat where I was
staying. In contrast, I was begging for
the TSO pain to end about 45 minutes in.
What is the difference?

You see, the big difference is that the BMG is actually
making fun of TSO—The following two YouTube clips sum everything up beautifully.

Hey, I know that performing is hard work and that it is easy to throw stones. All in all, I would recommend buying TSO’s albums, and of
course their show must be great for some people. I wanted to be wowed. But don’t go if you expect a Christmas show, or even real artistry. But, if you want a whiz-bang light show and the planetarium's Pink Floyd laser show is sold out, then this is a good bet. If you want to try a Christmas event that is a
little different and more than likely Free, how about going to see the Tuba Christmas in your local
area? A brass choir with only Tubas,
Euphoniums, Baritones, and the occasional Sousaphone. Oh, give it a try at
least on YouTube… Link 1Link 2

Cheers-

-Dr. B

PS- I do understand that TSO is supposedly trying to be
socially conscious and give us a message.
Great. But the way they are doing
it is boring and incoherent. Here is a
clip where you can see what I am talking about in action (including blinding
the audience by pointing spotlights directly into their eyes, just as they did in the show I went to). (TSO Clip). If you want to deliver a message, there are better ways to do it (BMGClip).

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

A few weeks ago I was asked to discuss how it seems that retailers are putting out Christmas items earlier and earlier each year by a local TV station, and by Matt Small at AP Radio. Of course, the press often chooses one small, silly point you make to include for your 5 seconds of fame. My better points about the situation were:

Reasons why it happens:
This is a general case of a "prisoner's dilemma" or "race to the bottom". Stores believe that if they don't do it, everyone else will, and they will lose out. They also believe that even if everyone else doesn't, they will win by being first. We are seeing the same kind of leap-frogging in the presidential primaries-- we all agree that this is the wrong outcome, but individual, selfish behavior makes it rational for individuals, but irrational for the collective result. By the way, consumers are just as much to blame- enough of us play the game and will show up whenever the stores tell us we might get a good deal and save $20-- even if that means freezing and getting sick at 3am rather than snoozing in your nice, warm bed. Not me, however-- but if you see a good deal, grab me one since you're already there. ☺

Additionally, since the Christmas season accounts for as much as 40% of yearly sales, retailers make sure to order their merchandise well ahead of time, so that there are no supply-chain mix-ups. I believe that this adds pressure as well. If you have the merchandise on hand, why not put it out?

Reasons why it is a bad idea
However, there are a few reasons why I think that this trend is a bad idea. First, I don't really believe that putting Christmas items out for twice as long will lead to twice as much spending. Plus, all of that Christmas merch takes up a lot of space-- there are lots of things that I'd like to buy that stores won't be carrying this week, because of all of the Christmas stuff they have out. A concrete example is that Walmart clears out most of their garden section for their Christmas items-- they do this so early now that you can't buy supplies for your Fall lime/seeding that one does in order to hope for a few blades of grass to grow the following year.

Secondly, as this NY Times article mentions, some retailers are thinking of opening just a little earlier for Black Friday-- Target, Khols, and others on Midnight Thanksgiving. Walmart has one-upped them by saying that they will open at 10PM on Thanksgiving. In some people's opinions, this is a bad idea. I agree! Why? Sadly, the best answer I can give is that it violates my sense of tradition. Christmas largely has its power in today's secular west because of "Christmas Traditions", after all. Black Friday has become a tradition, as well, and I firmly believe that forcing people out of stores, and giving an almost universal day off for Thanksgiving is an important part of the season. Pretty soon, Thanksgiving and Black Friday will both seem like "just another day"-- how long will it be before Christmas is just another workday, as well? (And then where will 40% of your revenues come from, eh Walmart?)

Cheers-
-Dr. B

PS: Another interesting issue I'd like to know about is, with Christmas goods out for so long, how do prices fluctuate during the season? Economists often discuss this issue in terms of the so-called "Durable Goods Problem". This phenomenon suggests that we all know that producers and sellers often charge higher prices for goods when they are first put out, but lower prices later if you wait. Think of iPhones, day after Christmas sales, the latest model of car, computer, or clothes. The simplistic version of the durable goods problem suggests that this won't work if everyone is rational, because we will ALL wait instead of paying the high price today. In reality, there are (at least) three types of people: Early adopters, "normal" people, and budget-conscious planners. So, some people get a thrill from blowing their money on the latest gadget, some buy it after the first price drop, and some people buy the used, older version from the early adopters on Craigslist! Long story short, I wonder if prices on Christmas goods follow this same pattern?

First, the numbers between the CEW and WSJ sites do not match up.The WSJ Numbers were different because they were based on 2010 ACS Survey data rather than 2009 ACS data.

Second, the WSJ says that the data used is from the 2010 US Census, which has to be false. The Census Bureau did not collect any data on earnings or education in the 2010 Census. Yes, they used to, and their failure to collect this data in 2010 will be seen as a huge mistake in the future, because small area studies relying on Census data can no longer be done. By small I mean the Census Tract or Block Group Level. In any case, the study used the 2009 "American Community Survey", which is administered by the Census Bureau.As above, they used 2010 ACS data, which should be carefully distinguished from 2010 Census Data.

Third, and most important, is that no effort is made to express the accuracy of these numbers. Let me demonstrate why this is so important. In order to demonstrate this, I am relying on combining two sources: The data at the CEW, and also a table from the ACS 2009 with summary statistics AND margins of error. Here is a link to it, but be forewarned it is pretty big. According to the 2009 ACS, 35,494,367 (+/- 120,221) people in the US have a 4 year degree as their highest education level, out of 201,952,383 people over 25 years old. Looking here at computers/math majors in the CEW report, they say that 7,829 (+/- not given) people have degrees in "Math and Computer Science" (I am assuming a double major?).

Here comes my point: The ACS in 2009 surveyed 1,917,748 households, and let us suppose that translates into around 3,000,000 people who are 25 and older (around 1.5 people over 25 per household). That means that surveys covered around 3 (million) out of every 202 (million) people, or 1.5%. If the ACS surveyed approximately 1.5% of the 7,829 Math and Computer Science majors, the quartiles for income given in the report are based on surveys of around .015*7,829≈117 people. Of course, we don't know how many people they actually surveyed with this major, but this seems small. How large might the standard error be for the $98,000 median? Here come some back-of-the-envelope calculations! Watch out for LOTS of assumptions!

To simplify things, let us assume that the distribution of salaries for the majors is a normal distribution-- of course this is not true, but this is a rough calculation, after all (and doing a better job requires having the raw data!). Then, the $75,000 and $134,000 1st and 3rd quartiles would be around 0.67 standard deviations above and below the mean. These two numbers are 23 and 36 thousand dollars away from the median, respectively (providing evidence of non-normality!), so lets guess that 0.67 standard deviations is in the neighborhood of 30,000, making 1 standard deviation around 30/0.67 ≈$45,000.

Now, given that the distribution is not normally distributed, I would bet that the confidence interval would be even wider. I think that reports like this should give you a clue that some of their estimates have confidence intervals that are over $20,000 wide!I was told that in a Future, updated report which will merge the 2009 and 2010 ACS data, the CEW plans to issue some guidance about standard errors in an appendix. I think that reporting sample sizes for each major would largely satisfy my concerns.

Now, to be fair, I am picking on one of the less frequent majors and highest variation majors in the tables... most of them will be better than this. However, these reports should still at least MENTION that this is sample data, and the numbers are only estimates, and that comparing numbers across majors might be unwise due to errors. Additionally, these survey forms are typically filled out by one person in the household for all household members-- this introduces other forms of survey error into the mix. Ask yourself-- how accurately do I know what my spouse makes in a year? How many thousands might you be off if I asked you on the spot? For that matter, how well do you know your own? Or, how accurately would you report your own income? (Copies of the Survey forms can be found here)